The Kim Archer Blog

Happy birthday to Brandt

Brandt turned 21.

And we had a mega party at Soho on Darby! Was huge. And fun. Note to self, don't wear new platform ankle boots to an event without wearing them in first. My feet were in total agony by the end of the night!

More photos etc later but for now, here's the DVD I made for Brandt which we played after the speeches and cake cutting! It's a glimpse into the last 21 years in our family and has video footage from over the years and photos etc and I thought I would add it here for some of the family who didn't make it to the party as well as family and friends who want to watch it again...and any other readers who may be interested..

Take particular note:

• it's worth watching the whole thing just to see the "family bloopers" at the end of the video! The two old dudes are my dad and my uncle!
• Jamison did not really have a mullet haircut when he was about 6 - he's wearing one of my mums wigs, although he said he might grow a mullet after watching this DVD *joking*
• thank you to my cousins and their kids, aunties and my mum for their lover-ly rendition of happy birthday at the end of the video. Take special note of my cousin Jodi (on the left) and her very special dance moves!
• warning - really bad early 90's hair styles!
• I left out one of the most important tv shows from Brandt's childhood - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Cowabunga dude!
• In the blink of an eye, that teeny tiny baby is a grown up. It does my head in!
• I love that I had so much video footage and photos for this little DVD!

 

some family things

Week one of the school holidays is over. It's been filled with lots of social activities - movies, shopping, sleepovers, skate parks, lunches and running around.

Brandt's birthday invites went out. He turns 21 in a few days. Which is ludicrous because it feels like MY 21st was only a few years ago. Wasn't it!?

I put together a little collage of photos over the years of him and created the invite in Photoshop and had the photos processed at Big W. I was so pleased with how they printed and it certainly saved me having the hassle of having to crank them out on our home printer. I printed 80 invites for the grand total of $12. Wonderful!

The RSVPs are already rolling in and there are so many old and new friends coming and family and cousins..it will be great to catch up with them all.

While his birthday is this week, the party isn't for a few weeks yet but there will be plenty of birthday celebrating this week I am sure!

impromptu lunch and afternoon tea

I love spontaneous outings! Where you just make a decision to do something and jump in the car and do it! With little or no notice!!

Sunday we did just that and found ourselves at the yacht club for lunch with mum & dad. The weather was divine and we had a sunny spot where we could enjoy the marina and boats and the lovely view as we ate our lunch. And we were so spontaneous, I left home without my camera and had to make do with my iPhone!

After lunch we walked next door to Rock Salt for coffee and dessert..Here's mum and Jamison walking along - he's grown SO tall and this photo..

reminded me of this photo taken about 4 years ago..

We had a lovely marina view table at Rock Salt..

source. 

and ordered delicious desserts to share. We all marvelled at how the desserts were plated up..and did our best Masterchef impersonation as we tasted each dish!! Capri and I shared a chocolate wedge cake with milk bottle ice-cream (Rock salt's description - was really just vanilla ice-cream..)and teeny raspberry jellies with some weird looking wafer thing balanced precariously on the ice cream!

And mum and Jamison shared a meringue and honeycomb stack with a Bailey's puddle and toffee shards on top..

and Ken and my dad stuck with the coffee although did have a taste of our desserts!

and it was a very pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

new carpet

Sorry.

I did disappear after the carpet was installed didn't I? I had good intentions of sharing photos but I was also flat chat moving furniture back into place, rearranging rooms and painting furniture! And the days have moved past so quickly it's causing me headspins!

I did however take photos of the carpet in the rooms before all the furniture went back in and I have finally uploaded them to my computer.

I LOVE the carpet - after stressing over the colour, really, I couldn't imagine having any other carpet colour. And I am SO happy I pushed on and got all the bedrooms painted before hand as the colours all came together nicely.

It was a mammoth effort to clear each room totally!! Here's Capri's room before..

and after

and our room before..with our lovely charcoal feature wall all finished..

I was SO pleased to see that cold, hard concrete covered up..with soft, springy, beautiful carpet!!

It was VERY hard to try and photograph the carpet to show a true picture of what it really looks like. The sun was casting light on the floor and it was just hard to try and capture a decent image of the carpet...but you get the idea.

 

No after photos, when our furniture was moved back in - I hate our bedroom suite and it was a shame to have to put the side tables back in there. So I am on the look out for some quirky second hand side tables I can do up! They don't have to even match..something like this would be delightful!

 
Source.

Or this with different handles..

Source

or this

Source

Or even this - painted and distressed in aqua or antique white..

   

I'm on the look out!

mother's day 2011

With all my kids now in high school, this year was the first year in fifteen years where I didn't receive a Mother's Day Stall present :(

Oh how I missed the mug with chocolates all done up in cellophane, the cheap soap wrapped in a hankie and the rose scented candles! Capri reminded me of the time she gave me the vegetable printed tea towel - she was oh so proud and her brothers teased her something shocking for giving me a tea towel!

I miss those little gems! And that vegetable printed teatowel is still in use in the Archer kitchen!

My Mother's Day started the night before when my dad surprised me, my mum and sister with a bunch of flowers each! I don't know that dad has EVER given me flowers! So that was novel.

And my morning started with a cuppa in bed, made by Ken deliberately using a Mothers Day Stall mug from several years ago.

and lots of lovely presents..

Including slippers, Music From the Circle Girls CD, Olivia Newton John's lovely cook book LivWise, Instant Lottery tickets, Daryl Lea licorice and a cute "I love you Mum" heart from Capri who especially chose it so I would feel like I WAS getting something from the Mother's Day Stall!!

And then Brandt presented me some more flowers plus more Instant Lottery Tickets (Scratchies) and I won a combined amount of $27 and a free ticket!

We also went to my parent's place for lunch and I had a very nice Mother's Day indeed! I'll be back with photos of our new carpet (finally!) and some family photos from Mother's Day as well!

Seeya soon.

a happy birthday to my sister

Today is my sister's birthday so I put together a little photo collage of us showcasing our wonderful fashion style over the years.

 

Happy birthday Debbie....

a little easter story

Our Meet The Support Team feature will continue from tomorrow morning - we have two more team members left to share with you. In the meantime....

Easter started early here in the Archer household. Brandt was up and off to work by 6.30am after only arriving home after midnight as he had been to his friend's 21st.

The Easter Bunny had been and left a lover-ley Elegant Rabbit on my side table!! And there was an Elegant Rabbit gracing Ken's side table too!

The Easter Bunny had also been very busy out in the family room, leaving an Elegant Rabbit (obviously a popular choice)plus a Humpty Dumpty and some Smarties spelling out each kid's initial (so they knew who owned what)...all left on the coffee table.

Capri was up and about by about 7.30am. She came in to tell me that the Easter Bunny hadn't left as much for Brandt compared to her and Jamison. Huh? I was SURE the Easter Bunny had been very fair with her deliveries and so I went to investigate.

It seems a SECOND Easter Bunny had visited us late, late last night and left some extra goodies!!!

There was an extra box for each of the kids and two chocolate rabbits sitting there with an "m" and a "d" for mum and dad spelt out in Smarties!! I realised the original LARGE pile of Smarties spelling out a "B", "J" and a "C" was somewhat smaller than I remembered so it seems the second Easter Bunny utilised the Smarties on hand to create some extra initials!!!!

So it's been chocolate and croissants for breakfast here and now I am back into the painting BUT I have a helper!!!! Yay. Ken's helping me today. I hope to have our bedroom all finished very, very soon...

We have a few hours up our sleeve before we head off for an Easter Sunday BBQ at my parent's house!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE.

hoppy easter to you

Wishing all our @Home readers a safe and happy Easter.

 

Good Friday

This year we celebrated Easter and my sister's Anzac Day birthday a little earlier and got together yesterday - Good Friday.

More pics to come but wanted to share these...the kids are getting SO BIG! We try and line them up, youngest to oldest, for a photo each Easter we are together. They used to be so cooperative. These days - not so much!!

Here they are Easter 2006

Easter 2009

and oh my goodness they don't even FIT in the doorway anymore..Easter 2011

Yes, smiling faces - you would think they all cooperatively joined in and got their photo taken with no fuss and no bother. Believe me they DIDN'T. The whole lot of them were horrors!

All grown up. But not too grown up for the annual Easter Egg Hunt though. More pics once I edit them:)

 

More paint-y, messy fun!

Yesterday Lisa and I headed back to Pages 2 Scrap in Tuggerah for another arty, painty class, this time with Nathalie Kalbach who had travelled all the way from Germany to be with us.

Nathalie works for Tattered Angels and as I only own ONE SOLITARY SINGLE bottle of their Glimmer Mist and KNOW I don't use it to it's full potential, I thought it would be good to get to see what all the glimmer mist fuss was about.

We only had a lovely small group of ladies which was good for us as it meant lots of teacher attention and free reign of all the pretty bottles of Glimmer Mist and chalks and glazes, screens etc that Nathalie had with her.

And we got inky and messy as we layered and gesso-ed and sprayed and painted and embedded Vintaj bits and inked and stamped. And Lisa and I also chomped our way through a packet of mini chocolate caramel Easter eggs...yummo...

I wasn't at all happy with how my canvas was evolving during the class and felt a bit like the needy student up the back struggling with the spray bottles!!!!! but I figured I was learning a bunch of cool things I can use on other projects and I was enjoying the company and the break away from work....I was looking enviously around at all the other TOTALLY COOL canvases from the other girls and feeling so sad that mine looked so blah!

BUT once I grabbed a paintbrush toward the end of the class and some glimmer glaze, I felt instantly more at home with the paintbrush compared to handling the spray bottles, and I was able to "fix" my little canvas and some shine and glimmer and a more painter-ly finish and now I am pleased to admit...I LOVE it. Phew.

I don't get to be a student very often but it was nice to settle back and learn a few new things with Nathalie who was such a lovely lady. And there's certainly a few ideas she showed us that I look forward to trying out on other canvases...

Am I now a glimmer mist convert?

Um, not really. I love the pretty colours and the effects other people achieve with the glimmer mists but I am much more at home with my paints, inks and a paintbrush:) Although I do like a little spritz here and there of beautiful glimmery colour ..just now and then.

Our family photo was taken by the lovely Rachel Greig several years ago now..these days - Brandt's curls are now gone, my hair is shorter and blonder, Capri's hair is straighter, Kens hair is a bit thinner and Jamison is now 6'3" tall!!!